Speech at the Opening Session of the Congress

March 2

On behalf of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist
Party I declare the First Congress of the Communist
International open. First I would ask all present to rise in
tribute to the finest representatives of the Third
International:
Karl Liebknecht and
Rosa Luxemburg . ( All rise .)

Comrades, our gathering has great historic significance. It
testifies to the collapse of all the illusions cherished by
bourgeois democrats. Not only in Russia, but in the most
developed capitalist countries of Europe, in Germany for
example, civil war is a fact.

The bourgeois are terror-stricken at the growing workers’
revolutionary movement. This is understandable if we take into
account that the development of events since the imperialist war
inevitably favors the workers’ revolutionary movement, and that
the world revolution is beginning and growing in intensity
everywhere.

The people are aware of the greatness and significance of the
struggle now going on. All that is needed is to find the
practical form to enable the proletariat to establish its rule.
Such a form is the Soviet
system with the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Dictatorship of the proletariat—until now these words
were Latin to the masses. Thanks to the spread of the Soviets
throughout the world this Latin has been translated into all
modern languages; a practical form of dictatorship has been
found by the working people. The mass of workers now understand
it thanks to Soviet power in Russia, thanks to the
Spartacus League in Germany and to similar organizations in
other countries, such as, for example, the
Shop Stewards Committees in Britain . All this shows that a
revolutionary form of the dictatorship of the proletariat has
been found, that the proletariat is now able to exercise its
rule.

Comrades, I think that after the events in Russia and the
January struggle in Germany, it is especially important to note
that in other countries, too, the latest form of the workers’
movement is asserting itself and getting the upper hand. Today,
for example, I read in an anti-socialist newspaper a report to
the effect that the British government had received a deputation
from the Birmingham Workers’ Counsel and had expressed its
readiness to recognize the Councils as economic bodies. [A] The Soviet
system has triumphed not only in backward Russia, but also in
the most developed country of Europe—in Germany, and in
Britain, the oldest capitalist country.

Even though the bourgeoisie are still raging, even though they
may kill thousands more workers, victory will be ours, the
victory of the worldwide Communist revolution is assured.

Comrades, I extend hearty greetings to you on behalf of the
Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party. I move that
we elect a presidium. Let us have nominations. [B]

First published in 1920, in German,
in the book “Der I. Kongress der Kommunistischen
Internationale. Protokoll” in Petrograd.
First published in Russian in 1921 in the book “First Congress
of the Communist International. Minutes” in Petrograd.

Thesis and Report on Bourgeois Democracy and the Dictatorship of
the Proletariat
March 4

1. Faced with the growth of the revolutionary workers’ movement
in every country, the bourgeoisie and their agents in the
workers’ organizations are making desperate attempts to find
ideological and political arguments in defense of the rule
of the exploiters. Condemnation of dictatorship and a sense
of democracy are particularly prominent among these
arguments. The falsity and hypocrisy of this argument,
repeated in a thousand strains by the capitalist press and
at the
Berne yellow International Conference in February 1919,
are obvious to all who refuse to betray the fundamental
principles of socialism.

2. Firstly, this argument employs the concepts of
“democracy in general” and “dictatorship
in general “, without posing the question of the class
concerned. This nonclass or above class presentation, which
supposedly is popular, is an outright travesty of the basic
tenet of socialism, namely, its theory of class struggle,
which Socialists who have sided with the bourgeoisie
recognize in words but disregard in practice. For in no
civilized capitalist country does “democracy in
general” exist; all that exists is bourgeois
democracy, and it is not a question of “dictatorship
in general", but of the dictatorship of the oppressed class,
i.e., the proletariat, over its oppressors and exploiters,
i.e., the bourgeoisie, in order to overcome the resistance
offered by the exploiters in their fight to maintain their
domination.

3. History teaches us that no oppressed class ever did, or could, achieve power without going through a period of dictatorship, i.e., the conquest of political power and forceable suppression of the resistance always offered by the exploiters—the resistance that is most desperate, most furious, and that stops at nothing. The bourgeoisie, whose domination is now defended by the Socialists who denounce “dictatorship in general” and extol “democracy in general", won power in the advanced countries through a series of insurrections, civil wars, and the forcible suppression of kings, feudal lords, slaveowners and their attempts at restoration. In books, pamphlets, Congress resolutions, and propaganda speeches, Socialists have everywhere thousands and millions of times explained to people the class nature of these bourgeois revolutions and this bourgeois dictatorship. That is why the present defense of bourgeois democracy under the cover of talk about “democracy in general", and the present howls and shouts against proletarian dictatorship under the cover of shouts about “dictatorship in general", are an outright betrayal of socialism. They are, in fact, desertion to the bourgeoisie, denial of the proletariat’s right to its own, proletarian revolution, and a defense of bourgeois reformism at the very historical juncture when bourgeois reformism throughout the world has collapsed and
the war has created a revolutionary situation.

4. In explaining the class nature of bourgeois civilization,
bourgeois democracy and the bourgeois parliamentary system,
all Socialists have expressed the idea formulated with the
greatest scientific precision by Marx and Engels [Engels
Introduction to the The Civil War in France],
namely, that the most democratic bourgeois republic is no
more than a machine for the suppression of the working class
by the bourgeoisie, for the suppression of the working
people by a handful of capitalists. There is not a single
revolutionary, not a single Marxist among those now shouting
against dictatorship and for democracy, who has not sworn
and vowed to the workers that he excepts this basic truth of
socialism. But now, when the revolutionary proletariat is
in a fighting mood and taking action to destroy this machine
of oppression and to establish proletarian dictatorship,
these traitors to socialism claim that the bourgeoisie have
granted the working people “pure democracy", have abandoned
resistance and are prepared to yield to the majority of the
working people. They assert that in a democratic republic
there is not, and never has been, any such thing as a state
machine for the suppression of labor by capital.

5. The
Paris Commune —to which all who parade as
Socialists pay lip service (for they know that the workers
ardently and sincerely sympathize with though Commune)
—showed very clearly the historically conventional
nature and limited value of the bourgeois parliamentary
system and bourgeois democracy; institutions which, though
highly progressive compared with medieval times, inevitably
require a radical alteration in the era of proletarian
revolution. It was Marx who best appraised the historical
significance of the Commune.
In
his analysis,
he revealed the exploiting nature of
bourgeois democracy in the bourgeois parliamentary system
under which the oppressed classes enjoy the right to decide
once in several years which representative of the propertied
classes shall “represent and suppress” ( ver- und
zertreten ) the people in parliament. And it is now,
when the Soviet movement is embracing the entire world and
continuing the work of the Commune for all to see, that the
traitors to socialism are forgetting the concrete experience
and concrete lessons of the Paris Commune and repeating the
old bourgeois rubbish about “democracy in general”. The
Commune was not a parliamentary institution.

6. The significance of the commune, furthermore, lies in the
fact that it endeavored to crush, to smash to its very
foundations, the bourgeois state apparatus, the
bureaucratic, judicial, military and police machine, and to
replace it by a self-governing, mass workers’ organization
in which there was no division between legislative and
executive power. All contemporary bourgeois-democratic
republic’s, including the German republic—which the
traitors to socialism, in mockery of the truth, describe as
a proletarian republic—retain this state apparatus.
We therefore again get quite clear confirmation of the point
that shouting in defense of “democracy in general” is
actually defense of the bourgeoisie and their privileges as
exploiters.

7. “Freedom of assembly” can be taken as a sample of the
requisites of “pure democracy”. Every class conscience
worker who has not broken with his class will readily
appreciate the absurdity of promising freedom of assembly to
the exploiters at a time and in a situation when the
exploiters are resisting the overthrow of their rule and are
fighting to retain their privileges. When the bourgeoisie
were revolutionary, they did not, neither in England in 1649
nor in France in 1793, grant “freedom of assembly” to the
monarchists and nobles, who summoned foreign troops and
“assembled” to organize attempts at restoration. If the
present day bourgeoisie, who have long since become
reactionary, demand from proletariat advance guarantees of
“freedom of assembly” for the exploiters, whatever the
resistance offered by the capitalists to being expropriated,
the workers will only laugh at their hypocrisy.

The workers know perfectly well, too, that even in the most
democratic bourgeois republic “freedom of assembly” is a hollow
phrase, for the rich have the best public and private buildings
at their disposal, and enough leisure to assemble at meetings,
which are protected by the bourgeois machine of power. The
rural and urban workers and small peasants—the
overwhelming majority of the population—are denied all
these things. As long as that state of affairs prevails,
“equality", i.e., “pure democracy", is a fraud. The first thing
to do to win genuine equality and enable the working people to
enjoy democracy in practice is to deprive the exploiters of all
the public and sumptuous private buildings, to give to the
working people leisure and to see to it that their freedom of
assembly is protected by armed workers, not by heirs of the
nobility or capitalist officers in command of downtrodden
soldiers.

Only when that change is affected can we speak of freedom of
assembly and of equality without mocking at the workers, at
working people in general, at the poor. And this change can be
affected only by the vanguard of the working people, the
proletariat, which overthrows the exploiters, the bourgeoisie.

8. “Freedom of the press” is another of the principal slogans
of “pure democracy”. And here, too, the workers know 
and Socialists everywhere have explained millions of times
—that this freedom is a deception because the best
printing presses and the biggest stocks of paper are
appropriated by the capitalists, and while capitalist rule
over the press remains—a rule that is manifested
throughout the whole world all the more strikingly, sharply
and cynically—the more democracy and the republican
system are developed, as in America for example. The first
thing to do to win really equality and genuine democracy for
the working people, for the workers and peasants, is to
deprive capital of the possibility of hiring writers, buying
publishing houses and bribing newspapers. And to do that
the capitalists and exploiters have to be overthrown and
their resistance oppressed. The capitalists have always use
the term “freedom” to mean freedom for the rich to get
richer and for the workers to starve to death. And
capitalist usage, freedom of the press means freedom of the
rich to bribe the press, freedom to use their wealth to
shape and fabricate so-called public opinion. In this
respect, too, the defenders of “pure democracy” prove to be
defenders of an utterly foul and venal system that gives the
rich control over the mass media. They prove to be
deceivers of the people, who, with the aid of plausible,
fine-sounding, but thoroughly false phrases, divert them
from the concrete historical task of liberating the press
from capitalist enslavement. Genuine freedom and equality
will be embodied in the system which the Communists are
building, and in which there will be no opportunity for
massing wealth at the expense of others, no objective
opportunities for putting the press under the direct or
indirect power of money, and no impediments in the way of
any workingman (or groups of workingman, in any numbers) for
enjoying and practicing equal rights in the use of public
printing presses and public stocks of paper.

9. The history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
demonstrated, even before the war, what this celebrated
“pure democracy” really is under capitalism. Marxists have
always maintained that the more developed, the “purer"
democracy is, the more naked, acute and merciless the class
struggle becomes, and the “purer” the capitalist oppression
and bourgeois dictatorship. The Dreyfus case in republican
France, the massacre of strikers by hired bands armed by the
capitalists in the free and democratic American republic
—these and thousands of similar facts illustrate the
truth which the bourgeoisie are mainly seeking to conceal,
namely, that actually terror and bourgeois dictatorship
prevail in the most democratic of republics and are openly
displayed every time the exploiters think the power of
capital is being shaken.

10. The imperialist war of 1914-18 conclusively revealed even
to backward workers the true nature of bourgeois democracy,
even in the freest republics, as being a dictatorship of
the bourgeoisie. Tens of millions were killed for the sake
of enriching the German or the British group of
millionaires and multimillionaires, and bourgeois military
dictatorships were established in the freest republics.
This military dictatorship continues to exist in the Allied
countries even after Germany’s defeat. It was mostly the
war that opened the eyes of the working people, that
striped bourgeois democracy of its camouflage and showed
the people the abyss of speculation and profiteering that
existed during because of the war. It was in the name of
“freedom and equality” that the bourgeoisie wage the war,
in the name of “freedom and equailty” that the munitions
manufacturers piled up fabulous fortunes. Nothing that the
yellow Berne International does can conceal from the people
the now thoroughly exposed exploiting character of
bourgeois freedom, bourgeois equality and bourgeois
democracy.

11. In Germany, the most developed capitalist country of
Continental Europe, the very first months of full
Republican freedom, establish as a result of imperialist
Germany’s defeat, have shown the German workers and the
whole world the true class substance of the
bourgeois-democratic republic. The murder of Karl
Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg is an event of epoch-making
significance not only because of the tragic death of these
finest people and leaders of the truly proletarian,
Communist International, but also because the class nature
of an advanced European state—it can be said without
exaggeration, of an advanced state, on a worldwide scale
—has been conclusively exposed. If those arrested,
i.e., those placed under state protection, could be
assassinated by officers and capitalists with impunity, and
this under the government headed by social patriots, in the
democratic republic where such a thing was possible is a
bourgeois dictatorship. Those who voice their indignation
at the murder of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg but
fail to understand this fact are only demonstrating their
stupidity, or hypocrisy. “Freedom” in the German republic,
one of the freest and advanced republics of the world, is
freedom to murder arrested leaders of the proletariat with
impunity. Nor can it be otherwise as long as capitalism
remains, for the development of democracy sharpens rather
than dampens the class struggle which, by virtue of all the
results and influences of the war and of its consequences,
has been brought to boiling point.

Throughout the civilized world we see Bolsheviks being exiled,
persecuted and thrown into prison. This is the case, for
example, in Switzerland, one of the freest bourgeois republics,
and in America, where there has been anti-Bolshevik pogroms,
etc. . From the standpoint of “democracy in general", or “pure
democracy", it is really ridiculous that advanced, civilized,
and democratic countries, which are armed to the teeth, should
fear the presence of a few score men from backward, famine
stricken and ruined Russia, which the bourgeois papers, in tens
of millions of copies, described as savage, criminal, etc..
Clearly, the social situation that could produce this crying
contradiction is in fact a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.

12. In these circumstances, proletarian dictatorship is not
only an absolutely legitimate means of overthrowing
exploiters and suppressing the resistance, but also
absolutely necessary to the entire mass of working people,
being their only defense against the bourgeois dictatorship
which led to the war and is preparing new wars.

The main thing that Socialists fail to understand—which
constitutes their shortsightedness in matters of theory, their
subservience to bourgeois prejudices, and their political
betrayal of the proletariat—is that in capitalist
society, whenever there is any serious aggravation of the class
struggle intrinsic to that society, there can be no alternative
but the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie or the dictatorship of
the proletariat. Dreams of some third way are reactionary,
petty-bourgeois limitations. That is borne out by more than a
century of development of bourgeois democracy in the
working-class movement in all the advanced countries, and
notably by the experience of the past five years. This is also
borne out by the whole science of political economy, by the
entire content of Marxism, which reveals the economic
inevitability, wherever commodity economy prevails, of the
dictatorship of the bourgeoisie that can only be replaced by the
class which the very growth of capitalism develops, multiplies,
welds together and strengthens; that is, the proletarian class.

13. Another theoretical and political error of the Socialists
is their failure to understand that ever since the
rudiments of democracy first appeared in antiquity, its
forms notably changed over the centuries as one ruling
class replaced another. Democracy assumed different forms
and was applied in different degrees in the ancient
republics of Greece, the medieval cities and the advanced
capitalist countries. It would be sheer nonsense to think
that the most profound revolution in human history, the
first case in the world of power being transferred from the
exploiting minority to the exploited majority, could take
place within the time-worn framework of the old, bourgeois,
parliamentary democracy, without drastic changes, without
the creation of new forms of democracy, new institutions
that embody the new conditions for applying democracy, etc.

14. Proletarian dictatorship is similar to dictatorship of
other classes in that it arises out of the need, as every
other dictatorship does, to forcibly suppresses the
resistance of the class that is losing its political sway.
The fundamental distinction between the dictatorship of the
proletariat and a dictatorship of the other classes 
landlord dictatorship in the Middle Ages and bourgeois
dictatorship in all civilized capitalist countries 
consists in the fact that the dictatorship of landowners
and bourgeoisie was a forcible suppression of the
resistance offered by the vast majority of the population,
namely, the working people. In contrast, proletarian
dictatorship is a forcible suppression of the resistance of
the exploiters, i.e., of an insignificant minority the
population, the landlords and capitalists.

It follows that proletarian dictatorship must inevitably entail
not only a change in the democratic forms and institutions,
generally speaking, but precisely such change as provides an
unparalleled extension of the actual enjoyment of democracy by
those oppressed by capitalism—the toiling classes.

And indeed, the form of proletarian dictatorship that has
already taken shape, i.e., Soviet power in Russia, the
Räte-System in Germany, the Shop Stewards Committees in
Britain and similar Soviet institutions in other countries, all
this implies and presents to the toiling classes, i.e., the vast
majority of the population, greater practical opportunities for
enjoying democratic rights and liberties than ever existed
before, even approximately, in the best and the most democratic
bourgeois republics.

The substance of Soviet government is that the permanent and
only foundation of state power, the entire machinery of state,
is the mass scale organization of the classes oppressed by
capitalism, i.e., the workers and semi-proletarians (peasants
who do not exploit the labor of others and regularly resort to
the sale of at least a part of their own labor power). It is
the people, who even in the most democratic bourgeois republics,
while possessing equal rights by law, have in fact been debarred
by thousands of devices and subterfuges from participation in
political life and enjoyment of democratic rights and liberties,
that are now drawn into constant and unfailing, moreover,
decisive, participation in the democratic administration of the
state.

15. The equality of citizens, irrespective of sex, religion,
race, or nationality, which bourgeois democracy everywhere
has always promised but never affected, and never could
affect because of the domination of capital, is given
immediate and full effect by the Soviet system, or
dictatorship of the proletariat. The fact is that this can
only be done by a government of the workers, who are not
interested in the means of production being privately owned
and in the fight for their division and redivision.

16. The old, i.e., bourgeois, democracy and the parliamentary
system were so organized that it was the mass of working
people who were kept farthest away from a machinery of
government. Soviet power, i.e., the dictatorship of the
proletariat, on the other hand, is so organized as to bring
the working people close to the machinery of government.
That, too, is the purpose of combining the legislative and
executive authority under the Soviet organization of the
state and of replacing territorial constituencies by
production units—the factory.

17. The Army was a machine of oppression not only under the
monarchy. It remains as such in all bourgeois republics,
even the most democratic ones. Only the Soviets, the
permanent organizations of government authority of the
classes that were oppressed by capitalism, are in a
position to destroy the Army’s subordination to bourgeois
commanders and really merge the proletariat with the Army;
only the Soviets can effectively arm the proletariat and
disarm the bourgeoisie. Unless this is done, the victory
of socialism is impossible.

18. The Soviet organization of the state is suited to the
leading role of the proletariat as a class most
concentrated and enlightened by capitalism. The experience
of all revolutions and all movements of the oppressed
classes, the experience of the world Socialist movement
teaches us that only the proletariat is in a position to
unite and lead the scattered and backward sections of the
working and exploited population.

19. Only the Soviet government of the state can really affect
the immediate breakup and total destruction of the old,
i.e., bourgeois, bureaucratic and judicial machinery, which
has been, and has inevitably had to be, retained under
capitalism even in the most democratic republics, and which
is, in actual fact, the greatest obstacle to the practical
implementation of democracy for the workers and working
people generally. The Paris Commune took the first epoch
making step along this path. The Soviet system has taken
the second.

20. Destruction of state power is the aim set by all
Socialists, including Marx above all. Genuine democracy,
i.e., Liberty and equality, is unrealizable unless this aim
is achieved. But it’s practical achievement as possible
only through Soviet, or proletarian, democracy, for by
enlisting the mass organizations of the working people in
constant and unfailing participation in the administration
of the state, it immediately begins to prepare the complete
withering away of any state.

21. The complete bankruptcy of the Socialists who assembled in
Berne, their complete failure to understand the new, i.e.,
proletarian, democracy, is especially apparent from the
following. On February 10, 1919, Branting delivered the
concluding speech at the International Conference of the
yellow International in Berne. In Berlin, on February 11,
1919, Die
Freiheit, the paper of the International’s affiliates,
published an appeal from the party of “Independence” to the
proletariat. The appeal acknowledged the bourgeois
character of the Scheidemann government, rebuked it for
wanting to abolish the Soviets, which are described as
Träger und Schutzer der Revolution 
vehicles and guardians of the revolution—and
proposed that the Soviets be legalized, invested with
government authority and given the right to suspend the
operation of National Assembly decisions pending a popular
referendum.

That proposal indicates the complete ideological bankruptcy of
the theorists who defend democracy and failed to see its
bourgeois character. This ludicrous attempt to combine the
Soviet system, i.e., proletarian dictatorship, with the National
Assembly, i.e. bourgeois dictatorship, utterly exposes the
paucity of thought of the yellow Socialists and
Social-Democrats, their
reactionary petty-bourgeois political outlook, and their
cowardly concessions to the irresistible growing strength of the
new, proletarian democracy.

22. From a class standpoint, the Berne yellow International
majority, which did not dare to adopt a formal resolution
out of fear of the mass of workers, was right in condemning
Bolshevism. This majority is in full agreement with the
Russian Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, and the
Sheidemanns in Germany. In complaining of persecution by
the Bolsheviks, the Russian Mensheviks and Socialist
revolutionaries try to conceal the fact that they are
persecuted for participating in the Civil War on the side
of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat. Similarly, the
Sheidemanns and their party have already demonstrated in
Germany that they, too, are participating in the Civil War
on the side of the bourgeoisie against the workers.

It is therefore quite natural that the Berne yellow
International majority should be in favor of condemning the
Bolsheviks. This was not an expression of defense of “pure
democracy", but of the self defense of people who know and feel
that in the Civil War they stand with the bourgeoisie against
the proletariat.

That is why, from the class point of view, the decision of the
yellow International majority must be considered correct. The
proletariat must not fear the truth, it must face it squarely
and draw all the necessary political conclusions.

Comrades, I would like to add a word or two to the last two
points. I think that the comrades who are to report to us on
the burn Conference will deal with it in greater detail.

Not a word was said at the Berne Conference about the
significance of Soviet power. We in Russia have been discussing
this question for two years now. At our Party Conference in
April 1917, we raised the following question, theoretically and
politically: “What is Soviet power, what is its substance and
what is its historical significance?” We have been discussing
it for almost two years. And at our [Seventh] Party Congress we adopted a
resolution on it.

On February 11 the Berlin Die Freiheit published an
appeal to the German proletariat signed not only by the leaders
of the Independent
Social Democratic Party of Germany, but also by all members
of the Independent Social Democratic group in the Reichstag.
In August 1918, Kautsky,
one of the leading theorists of these Independents, wrote a
pamphlet entitled The Dictatorship of the Proletariat,
in which he declared that he was a supporter of democracy
and of Soviet bodies, but that the Soviets must be
bodies merely of an economic character and that they must not by
any means be recognized as state organizations. Kautsky says
the same thing in Die Freiheit of November 11 and
January 12. On February 9, an article appeared by Rudolf
Hilferding, who is also regarded as one of the leading and
authoritative theorists of the Second International, in which he
proposed that the Soviet system be united with the National
Assembly juridically, by state legislation. That was on
February 9. On February 11 this proposal was adopted by the
whole of the Independent Party and published in the form of an
appeal.

There is vacillation again, despite the fact that the National
Assembly already exists, even after “pure democracy” has been
embodied in reality, after the leading theorists of the
Independent Social Democratic Party have declared that the
Soviet organizations must not be state organizations! This
proves that these gentlemen really understand nothing about the
new movement and about its conditions of struggle. But it goes
to prove something else, namely, that there must be conditions,
causes, for this vacillation! When, after all these events,
after nearly two years of victorious revolution in Russia, we
are offered resolutions like those adopted at the Berne
Conference, which say nothing about the Soviets and their
significance, about which not a single delegate uttered a single
word, we have a perfect right to say that all these gentlemen
are dead to us as Socialists and theorists.

However, comrades, from the practical side, from the political
point of view, the fact that these Independents, who in theory
and on principle have been opposed to these state organizations,
suddenly making the stupid proposal to “peacefully” unite the
National Assembly with the Soviet system, i.e., to unite the
dictatorship of the bourgeoisie with the dictatorship of the
proletariat, shows that a great change is taking place among the
masses. We see that the Independents are all bankrupt in the
Socialist and theoretical sense and that an enormous change is
taking place among the masses. The backward masses among the
German workers are coming to us, have come to us! So, the
significance of the Independent Social Democratic Party of
Germany, the best section of the Berne Conference, is nil from
the theoretical and Socialist standpoint. Still, it has some
significance, which is that these waverers serve as an index to
us of the mood of the backward sections of the proletariat.
This, in my opinion, is a great historical significance of this
Conference. We experienced something of the kind in our own
revolution. Our Mensheviks traversed almost exactly the same
path as that of the theorists of the Independents in Germany.
At first, when they had a majority in the Soviets, they were in
favor of the Soviets. All we heard then was: “Long live the
Soviets!", “For the Soviets!", “The Soviets are revolutionary
democracy!” When, however, we Bolsheviks secured a majority in
the Soviets, they changed their tune; they said: the Soviets
must not exist side-by-side with the Constituent Assembly. And
various Mensheviks theorists made practically the same
proposals, like the one to unite the Soviet system with the
Constituent Assembly and to incorporate the Soviets into the
state structure. Once again it is here revealed that the
general course of the proletarian revolution is the same
throughout the world. First the spontaneous formation of
Soviets, then their spread and development, and then the
appearance of the practical problem: Soviets, or National
Assembly, or Constituent Assembly, or the bourgeois
parliamentary system; utter confusion among the leaders, and
finally—the proletarian revolution. But I think we
should not present the problem in this way after nearly two
years of revolution; we should rather adopt concrete decisions
because for us, and particularly for the majority of the West
European countries, spreading of the Soviet system is a most
important task.

I would like to quote here just one Mensheviks resolution. I
asked Comrade Obolensky to translate it into German. He
promised to do so but, unfortunately, he is not here. I shall
try to render it from memory, as I have not the full text of it
with me.

It is very difficult for a foreigner who has not heard anything
about Bolshevism to arrive at an independent opinion about our
controversial questions. Everything the Bolsheviks assert is
challenged by the Mensheviks, and vice versa. Of course, it
cannot be otherwise in the middle of the struggle, and that is
why it is so important that the last Menshevik Party conference,
held in December 1918, adopted the long and detailed resolution
published in full in the Menshevik Gazeta
Pechatnikov . In this resolution the Mensheviks themselves
briefly outline the history of the class struggle and of the
Civil War. The resolution states that they condemn those groups
in their Party which rallied with the propertied classes in the
Urals, in the South, in the Crimea and in Georgia—all
these regions are enumerated. Those groups of the Menshevik
party which, in alliance with the propertied classes, fought
against the Soviets are now condemned in the resolution; but the
last point of the resolution also condemns those who joined the
Communists. It follows that the Mensheviks were compelled to
admit that there was no unity in their party, and that its
members were either on the side of the bourgeoisie or on the
side of the proletariat. The majority of the Mensheviks went
over to the bourgeoisie and fought against us during the Civil
War. We, of course, persecute Mensheviks, we even shoot them,
when they wage war against us, fight against our Red Army and
shoot our Red commanders. We responded to the bourgeois war
with the proletarian war—there can be no other way.
Therefore, from the political point of view, all this is sheer
Menshevik hypocrisy. Historically, it is incomprehensible how
people who have not been officially certified as mad could talk
at the Berne Conference, on the instructions of the Mensheviks
and Socialist-Revolutionaries, about the Bolsheviks fighting the
latter, yet keep silent about their own struggle, in alliance
with the bourgeoisie, against the proletariat.

All of them furiously attack us for persecuting them. This is
true. But they do not say a word about the part they themselves
have taken in the Civil War! I think that I shall have to
provide the full text of the resolution to be recorded in the
minutes, and I shall ask the foreign comrades to study it
because it is a historical document in which the issue is raised
correctly and which provides excellent material for appraising
the controversy between the “socialist” trends in Russia. In
between the proletariat and bourgeoisie there is another class
of people, who incline first this way and then the other. This
has always been the case in all revolutions, and it is
absolutely impossible in capitalist society, in which the
proletariat and bourgeoisie formed to hostile camps, for
intermediary sections not to exist between them. The existence
of these waverers is historically inevitable, and,
unfortunately, these elements, who do not know themselves on
whose side they will fight tomorrow, will exist for quite some
time.

I want to make the practical proposal that a resolution be
adopted in the which three points shall be specifically
mentioned.

First: one of the most important tasks confronting
the West European comrades is to explain to the people the
meaning, importance and necessity of the Soviet system. There
is a sort of misunderstanding on this question. Although
Kautsky and Hilferding are bankrupt as theorists, their recent
articles in Die Freiheit show that they correctly
reflect the mood of the backward sections of the German
proletariat. The same thing took place in our country: during
the first eight months of the Russian Revolution the question of
the Soviet organization was very much discussed, and the workers
did not understand what the new system was and whether the
Soviets could be transformed into a state machine. In our
revolution we advanced along the path of practice, and not of
theory. For example, formally we did not raise the question of
the Constituent Assembly from the theoretical side, and we did
not say we did not recognize the Constituent Assembly. It was
only later, when the Soviet organizations had spread throughout
the country and had captured political power, that we decided to
dissolve the Constituent Assembly. Now we see that in Hungary
and Switzerland the question is much more acute. On the one
hand, this is very good: it gives us the firm conviction that in
the West European states the revolution is advancing more
quickly and will yield great victories. On the other hand, a
danger is concealed in it, namely, that the struggle will be so
precipitous that the minds of the mass of workers will not keep
pace with this development. Even now the significance of the
Soviet system is not clear to a large mass on the politically
educated German workers, because they have been trained in the
spirit of the parliamentary system and ingrained with bourgeois prejudices.

Second: About the spread of the Soviet system. When
we hear how quickly the idea of Soviets is spreading in Germany,
and even in Britain, it is very important evidence that the
proletarian revolution will be victorious. Its progress can
only be retarded for a short time. It is quite another thing,
however, when Comrades Albert and Platten tell us that in the
rural districts in their countries there are hardly any Soviets
among the farm laborers and small peasants. In Die
Rote Fahne I read in article opposing peasant Soviets, but
quite properly supporting Soviets of farm laborers and of poor
peasants. [C] The bourgeoisie and their lackeys, like
Sheidemann and company, have already issued the slogan of
peasant Soviets. All we need, however, is Soviets of farm
laborers and poor peasants. Unfortunately, from the reports of
Comrades Albert, Platten and others, we see that, with the
exception of Hungary, very little is being done to spread the
Soviet system in the countryside. In this, perhaps, lies the
real and quite serious danger threatening the achievement of
certain victory by the German proletariat. Victory can only be
considered assured when not only the German workers, but also
the rural proletarians are organized, and organized not as
before—in trade unions and cooperative societies 
but in Soviets. Our victory was made much easier by the fact
that in October
1917 we marched with the peasants, with all the peasants.
In that sense, our revolution at that time was a bourgeois
revolution. The first step taken by our proletarian government
was to embody in a law promulgated on October 26 (old-style),
1917, on the next day after the revolution, the old demands of
all the peasants which peasant Soviets and village assemblies
had put forward under Kerensky. That is where our strength lay;
that is why we were able to win the overwhelming majority so
easily. As far as the countryside was concerned, our revolution
continued to be a bourgeois revolution, and only later, after a
lapse of six months, were we compelled within the framework of
the state organization to start the class struggle in the
countryside, to establish Committees of Poor Peasants, of
semi-proletarians, in every village, and to carry on a
methodical fight against the rural bourgeoisie. This was
inevitable in Russia owing to the backwardness of the country.
In Western Europe things will proceed differently, and that is
why we must emphasize the absolute necessity of spreading the
Soviet system also to the rural population in proper, perhaps
new, forms.

Third: we must say that winning a Communist majority
in the Soviets is the principal task in all countries in which
Soviet government is not yet victorious. Our Resolutions’
Commission discussed this question yesterday. Perhaps other
comrades will express their opinion on it; but I would like to
propose that these three points be adopted as a special
resolution. Of course, we are not in a position to prescribe
the path of development. It is quite likely that the revolution
will come very soon in many West-European countries, but we, as
the organized section of the working-class, as a party, strive
and must strive to gain majority in the Soviets. Then our
victory will be assured and no power on Earth will be able to do
anything against the Communist revolution. If we do not,
victory will not be secured so easily, and it will not be
durable. And so, I would like to propose that these three
points be adopted as a special resolution.

Thesis published March 6, 1919 in Pravda No. 51;
report first published in 1920 in the German and in 1921 in the
Russian additions of the minutes of the First Congress of the
Communist International.

Resolution to the Thesis on Bourgeois Democracy and the
Dictatorship of the Proletarian

On the basis of these thesis and the reports made by the
delegates from the different countries, the Congress of the
Communist International declares that the chief task of the
Communist Parties in all countries where Soviet government has
not yet been established, is as follows:

1) to explain to the broad mass of the workers the historic
significance and the political and historical necessity of
the new, proletarian, democracy which must replace bourgeois
democracy and the parliamentary system;

2) to extend the organization of Soviets among the workers in
all branches of industry, among the soldiers in the Army and
the sailors in the Navy and also among farm laborers and poor
peasants;

3) to build a stable Communist majority inside the Soviets.

Pravda No. 54, March 11, 1919
and in the journal Communist International No. 1,
May 1, 1919

Concluding Speech at the Closing Session of the Congress
March 6

That we have been able to gather, despite all the persecution
and all the difficulties created by the police, that we have
been able without any serious differences and in a brief space
of time, reach important decisions on all the vitally urgent
questions of the contemporary revolutionary epoch, we owe to the
fact that the proletarian masses of the whole world, by their
action, have brought up these questions in practice and begun to
tackle them.

All we have had to do here has been to record the gains already
won by the people in the process of their revolutionary
struggle.

Not only in the East European but also in the West European
countries, not only in the vanquished but also in the victor
countries, for example in Britain, the movement in favor of
Soviets is spreading farther and farther, and this movement is,
most assuredly, a movement pursuing the aim of establishing the
new, proletarian democracy. It is the most significant step
towards the dictatorship of the proletariat to, towards the
complete victory of communism.

No matter how the bourgeoisie of the whole world rage, how much
they deport or jail or even kill
Spartacists and Bolsheviks—all this will no longer
help. It will only serve to enlighten the masses, help rid them
of the old bourgeois-democratic prejudices and steel them in the
struggle. The victory of the proletarian revolution on a world
scale is assured. The founding of an international Soviet
republic is on the way. ( Stormy Applause. )

First published in 1920 in the German and a 1921 in the Russian
additions of the minutes of the First Congress of the Communist
International

Endnotes

[A]
Most probably, it is not the Birmingham Workers’ Counsel that is
meant here, but the
shop stewards committee . It is very likely that the
newspaper which Lenin read contained incorrect information.
Speaking at the First Congress of the Communist International on
March 3, 1919, J. Fineberg, a delegate from the British
Communist group, said:

“In industrial areas local workers’ committees were formed,
including representatives of the shop stewards committees, for
instance, the Clyde workers’ committee, London and Sheffield
workers’ committees and so on. The committees served as
organizational centers and representatives of organized labor
and localities. For some time the employers in the government
refused to recognize the shop stewards committees, but in the
end they had to enter into negotiations with these unregistered
committees. That Lloyd George agreed to recognize the
Birmingham committee as an economic organization proves the shop
stewards committees had become permanent factors in the British
movement. In the shop stewards committees, workers’ committees
and national conferences of shop stewards committees we have an
organization similar to the one forming the basis of the Soviet
republic"